Bannock Street Criterium (August 7, 2005)

When I was about 7 or 8 years old, my mom gave me my first bike: a blue beauty. It was perfect. It was my favorite color, and it was a girl’s bike, not to be mixed up with my big brother Bob’s bike. All mine.

I remember watching Bob learn to ride a bike, and I was determined to be like him, only better. So I started out with training wheels but insisted that they be taken off as soon as I had the barest the feel of the bike. Somehow, at age 8, I knew it was sink or swim. My bike was a thing all my own, and it gave me wings.

Soon I was riding around our little town – population 200, give or take a few souls – and I was independent. It was a different time, and all of us kids had the run of the town. Soon enough, I found a group of kids to race with.

In our little town, the two churches were located on the same block, just a block away from where I lived. The races that we had were laps around the church block, and I remember riding fast and furious. But the problem was in the corners – loose gravel – and I wrecked hard and often. My mom soon gave me orders to stop racing, or else. “Or else” was the place you didn’t want to go with mom. So I stopped racing.

Until. Until the next time the kids were all lined up on the far corner of the church block, and I was out on my bike, and I forgot my promise to Mom. Only trouble was, this time I crashed harder than ever before. My friend Anne helped me drag my battered and bleeding body to her house – just opposite the church block – and enlisted her mom, who was a nurse, to patch me up. Elbows, knees: scraped beyond recognition, with lots of gravel embedded. I remember sitting in Mrs. Phillips kitchen, crying as she applied betadine and bandages; it hurt like he**, but I was really crying because I knew how much trouble I would be in at home.

Mrs. Phillips called Mom, who came to pick me up, and there must have been something in her message that told Mom how bad I felt. Mercifully, Mom did not lecture me again about racing. I think she knew that I had gotten the comeuppance that I deserved, and no more words were needed. My racing career ended for the season with that event.

The next summer, my mom remarried (she was widowed when I was very young) and we moved to a different town. My racing pals were gone. I rode my trusty blue beauty around my new town, but the kids there didn’t seem to be into bikes at all, and after a while, my blue beauty took a place with my brother’s bikes, around the corner of the house, and underused.

In the new town, the kids all played kickball. In the old town, we had not really been into organized sports – we all just played together, climbed on the jungle gym, shot some baskets in the gym when the weather was bad, and maybe had tetherball tournaments outside in nice weather. But kickball was the name of the game in the new town, and everyone there had played since kindergarten. That is, everyone except me. As the new kid on the block (and a tall, ungainly girl at that), I was uncoordinated and inexperienced, and soon earned the reputation as a horrible kickball player. I was the last person chosen when picking teams at recess, and I didn’t disappoint – I was horrible at this game, and soon figured that I was just bad at all sports. Blue Beauty sat at home and rusted slowly while my self-esteem also tarnished and faded into something dull and sorry.

Years later I would buy a 10-speed bike straight out of college, aware of the cycling craze that was sweeping the country, and try to get some of that earlier joy of the bike back, but it never worked. The shifters on the bike and the gearing were a mystery to me, and I was scared to death to ride in the city traffic in the Midwestern city where I moved with this new bike. But I kept trying, and even more years later, I brought my 10-speed bike to Colorado, where my first mountain ride would end with me in the hospital with broken bones and concussion and road rash so serious it required plastic surgery. At some rational level, I figured that I was not meant to ride a bike, and so, for the next 20 years, I surrendered to this fate.

But then crazy things happened in my life, and about four years ago I found a love of cycling all over again. Today I have overcome much of my fear of riding through the patient and kind coaching of my life’s partner, Mick, and with Mick, I have ridden Ride the Rockies and Tour de France routes and lots of long and lovely rides in the mountains, including a couple of gentle uphill races. Mick loves the bike, and he loves to race, and he has gradually encouraged me to race with him.

But the one type of race that has scared the bejesus out of me has been the criterium – the closed circuit race, loops on a fixed course. Riding around and around blocks in town. Kind of like racing around the church block.

And it just happens that there is a criterium in Denver – one of the most popular races of this type in the mile high city – that takes place each August just outside my home. Just. Outside. My. Home. On the street where I live.

In the five years that I’ve lived here, I’ve become gradually more and more aware of the race, and I’ve watched it on occasion, and I’ve been out of town on more occasions, only to arrive back in the city on Sunday night to see the tell-tale signs that the race happened – the road barricades stacked up at corners, the hay bales leaning up against the street signs, and the orange chalk on the roadway, marking all the road hazards. I have always had a reason why I could not do this race, even if I wanted to.

Until today. Mick and I trade weekends between our two homes, and this weekend is his turn to come to Denver. I’ve warned him that I already have plans to go to a concert with my friend Denise on Saturday, so he knows that our time together will be limited. But he also knows that it’s the weekend of the Bannock Street Crit, and he wants to ride it, so he comes for the weekend. And he convinces me that we should ride the Citizen’s race, and pulls me the two blocks over from my home to register.

As we approach the registration table, I tell him I’m too nervous; I can’t do this, and he says, “Okay, we don’t have to, and offers to turn around.” But I know I need to overcome this fear – this fear of riding around in circles and wrecking badly – or it will live with me forever. And I have a need to purge the demons that lodged in my brain in my 4th grade year, when I learned to think that I was rotten at sports and that everyone else was far better. So we walk up to the registration table, and fill out the forms, and now I have a bib. It’s time to go home and get ready to race.

Ninety minutes later, I’ve warmed up a bit on my newest trusty bike – a Trek 5200 carbon fiber charcoal-colored beauty that I call “Lance” – and I find myself getting ready to take my one warm-up lap on the race course. I’m scared out of my wits, and Mick is off warming up, so I’m completely on my own. We have registered in the adult Citizen’s race; the Citizen’s races have been sandwiched in between all the licensed riders races, and there have been several heats of kids races. Adults – men and women – will start at 1:20 p.m., just 30 seconds separating the men from the women. The kids come through their last lap, and I’m there at the opening as they exit the course.

One little girl, in particular, catches my attention. She is petite, but she is handling her bike like an old pro as she leaves the race course. She takes off her helmet and, walking her bike down the sidewalk in front of me, announces to the boy next to her, “I got third.” The summer sun shimmers off her white-blond cotton candy hair. “Only two other 10-year olds passed me.” She is fresh off the race, and is panting hard, and her voice is full of pride and knowing. I only wish that I could be so confident, and I wish for my old 8 year old self – the pre-crash self, the pre-kickball persona. This 10 year old girl with the sun glistening in the sun has far more chutzpah than I. How did I get it so wrong for so long?

But then the race course opens up, and now I’m riding the course on my warm-up lap, and it feels incredibly good. These are, after all, my streets. This is my neighborhood; I know the turns, the buildings, the streets that have just been repaved. At first I think I will be embarrassed if anyone from my building sees me, but as we prepared our bikes in the communal garage, I saw many of my neighbors, and couldn’t help blurting out, to each one, “we’re doing the race!” And as I ride my reconnaissance lap, I start to realize that the race will take all of my focus, and it doesn’t really matter who is out there.

We all line up at the start/finish line, and the men’s race starts. We women move up to the broad white line painted on the newly paved black asphalt. I look around. There are only 7 women in the women’s race, and I like the number. Enough to be a competition, but not so many that it will ever be crowded. I’ve long since decided that it won’t matter a bit if I come in dead last, I just don’t want to embarrass myself. This seems to be a kind and fun group, and that worry evaporates just as the race marshal starts us on our way.

And, to my dismay, I realize that I’ve made a rookie mistake – I’m starting in my big ring. The first couple of rotations are hard, and I berate myself, but there is nothing to be done but to pedal. And I’m off the line, and standing on my pedals to get up some power, and I see one woman jump out in front. I am not thinking about endurance, I’m just thinking about getting up some speed. And another woman takes off in front of me, but now I’m moving, and the rest of the small field is behind me.

The first turn comes, and I realize that now that my wheels are spinning, I’m not far behind the second place woman. This street was not part of the recent repaving project, so I watch the markings on the road carefully. But I’m already starting to feel at home on this course – about a mile in length – and so my attention all goes to focus on chasing down the woman in front of me.

We round the corners of the course – no stretch is longer than two blocks, and there are just two right-hand turns in a course that otherwise moves counterclockwise. I climb up close behind the number 2 woman, and try to draft off her, but this strategy doesn’t work well. I’m not sure if she does this intentionally, but she changes speed and weaves about in a line that is different than the one I want to take, and I can’t really stick with her. So I hang back just a bit. Solidly in third place, it’s a thrill when we pass the start/finish line and hear, over the loudspeakers, the announcer tell the group that two more of the lead women are coming through.

I chase the number two woman, and, magically, somewhere in lap two, I bound around her. It’s a thrill! Now I am the number 2 woman! And I’m working as hard as I possibly can. The number 1 woman is long gone, so it’s just a stretch of pavement in front of me. I hang on, out in front, and have a grand time going through the start/finish area at the close of lap 2. I’ve only watched a few crits, but I know that at least some of the spectators will notice that we’ve changed positions, and I’m thrilled to be out here.

But this pesky woman has grabbed onto my wheel, and she is drafting me through the first part of our third lap. We have, somehow, managed to catch up with a straggler from the men’s race (it started 30 seconds before our race, so the Citizen’s men are out on the course with us), and now he has fallen in behind the pesky woman. Partway into lap 3, the two of them ricochet around me, and they are gone.

I ride like crazy, and keep them in my sights, and soon the lead they have opened is narrowing. We are in lap 4 – out of 5 – and I am riding like crazy to keep them in my range. Number 2 woman takes a long line around a couple of the turns, and I think I ride more efficiently through these corners, and close the distance. But she clearly is faster in the straights, so I have to work like crazy all the way.

I have forgotten my heart rate monitor, something I’m happy about after the race gets underway – I would not have the time to consult it. I do not look at my bike computer, and have no idea how fast we are going, how long, nor how far. The only indication I have of where we are is the voice through the loudspeakers as we cross the start/finish each lap, calling out the number of laps yet to go.

Before we cross the start/finish at the close of our fourth lap, I catch a glimpse of people up ahead of us. What the heck??? My race-addled brain tries to deduce who might be up in front, but I can’t fathom who would be there. But then as we approach, and pass, the people, I realize that we’ve just done something very cool: lapped two of the women in our race! Before the race started, I was greatly afraid that I would be riding off the back of the pack, and that I would be lapped multiple times by the faster riders. Does this mean that today, I am one of the faster riders?

Now we’ve just crossed the start/finish line for the penultimate time, and the winners of the men’s race come racing up behind us and blast past. This give me more incentive to keep up the pace – less than one more lap! But something weird is happening, I’m just about to overtake the second place woman for the second time in the day - but this time it’s because she has slowed down. As I approach her – and the winning guys have just ridden by, on their warm-down lap – she says to me, “so that’s it – we’re done?” And I understand that she is slowing because she thinks the race is over. Panting, I say “no! we have a lap to go!”, and she picks up the pace, and I’m on her wheel once again.

I pedal as hard as I can, and I forget all about earlier races and earlier crashes; all thoughts about riding this race just for fun have long ago left my cranium. I pedal with all my heart. I am 8 years old again, and I am chasing down the neighborhood kids, and I take the corners as fast as I possibly can; hang the risk. All I can see – all I can think – is the woman who is about 20 yards in front of me. I catch and pass the guy – the straggler from the men’s group – and now it’s just this woman and me. I’m breathing as hard as I can and my legs are turning over as fast as they can, but there is the finish line, and it’s just not quite enough. Still, I chase her down even when there is no hope of catching her, and I finish in third place, just 10 yards behind number 2. And not only have I survived my first neighborhood race in nearly 40 years, I’ve earned a spot on the podium.

We take a warm-down lap, and the number 2 woman and I chat like best friends. We thank each other for the good race, and we talk about the laps and the course and racing – we’re both new to it – and about what a great event this is. When we come around to the start/finish line for the last time, I don’t want to get off the course – I want to keep riding around and around in circles. But it’s time for another race to start, and I need to go find Mick. When I locate him, I’m still sweating from the race, and I hurry up to him and say, “I got third!” And we hang around until it’s time to pick up my third place medal. After all, it’s been a 40 year wait to get here. Another 15 minutes is nothing. Nothing at all.